1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a flushing method for a fluid ejecting device such as an ink jet printer and a fluid ejecting device.
2. Related Art
Fluid ejecting devices have fluid ejecting heads that can eject fluids as liquid droplets and eject various fluids from the fluid ejecting heads.
As a typical example of the fluid ejecting device, there is an image recording device such as an ink jet printer that includes an ink jet record head (hereinafter, simply referred to as a record head) as a fluid ejecting head and performs a recording process by forming dots by ejecting ink having a fluid shape from nozzles (openings) of the record head as ink droplets toward a ejection target such as a recording sheet and landing the ink in the ejection target.
In addition, recently, application of the fluid ejecting device is not limited to the image recording device, and the fluid ejecting device is applied to various manufacturing devices such as a color filter manufacturing device used in a liquid crystal display or the like.
In the above-described image recording device, ink stored in a fluid storing unit such as an ink tank or an ink cartridge is introduced into a pressure chamber of the record head, and a pressure generating source such as a piezoelectric vibrator is driven by applying a driving signal to the piezoelectric vibrator. Accordingly, a pressure change is generated in the ink inside the pressure chamber, and ink droplets are ejected from the nozzles by controlling the pressure change.
The record head is configured to increase or decrease the liquid amount (the weight or volume) of the ink droplets ejected from the nozzles in accordance with a driving voltage value (an electric potential difference from a lowest voltage value to a highest voltage value) or a waveform of the driving signal supplied to the pressure generating source.
In addition, in the fluid ejecting device, a flushing process in which ink having increased viscosity inside the nozzles and the like are ejected by ejecting ink from the nozzles before start of a recording (printing) process, in the middle of the recording process, after completion of the recording process, or the like is performed for preventing loss of the dots by appropriately maintaining the states of the nozzles of the record head and ejecting ink droplets of a desired liquid amount all the time.
JP-A-10-181047, JP-A-2001-277543, JP-A-2006-123499 are examples of related art.
In general technology, generally, a regular flushing process that is performed regularly in the middle of a recording (printing) process is performed at predetermined time intervals (for example, a time interval of 10 seconds). In such a case, the number of ejections (for example, several tens of times) is set in advance such that ink having increased viscosity can be removed even in a worst condition (for example, high temperature and low humidity of 40 degrees centigrade (° C.) and 10 percent (%)) that can be supposed based on the use environment.
Thus, even in a case where the ink scarcely has increased viscosity, ink droplets are ejected unnecessarily. Accordingly, there is a problem that a lot of ink is wasted and the efficiency of the recording process decreases.